The Last Friend You'll Ever Have

By Sarah M. Anderson

Suzie Cain has more problems than she can count—the least of which is the fact that, if she touches a person, that person’s going to die within the week.

That, at least, she can work with. If people want to give her money to hang out with terrible people, well—it isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time, but it’s a living.

She has bigger problems. For starters, she doesn’t know who she is. Oh, she knows she’s Suzie, orphan and foster kid. She knows she’s dangerous. But why? Where did she come from? Her only clue is an old photo of a very angry woman with some sort of…shadow hovering behind her and a strange poem—or is it a curse?—written on the back.

And now she’s picked up a new problem, a biker named Ace who seems to be tracking her across state lines. He’s operating under the assumption that Suzie is a mercenary for hire, just like he is—and he doesn’t like the competition. But when she’s got the chance, she doesn’t touch him and she doesn’t know why.

If Suzie can break her curse, she can change her luck.

But life is never that simple. Because of course not.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Publishing
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781094425351

Sarah M. Anderson

I spent my childhood wandering through the woods behind our house, pretending to be an Indian. Later, when I fully discovered horses, it prompted my mother the history teacher to put anything and everything about the High Plains tribes into my hands. This infatuation lasted for over a decade. At some point, I got away from Indians. My mother blames boys. I discovered Victorian novels and didn't look back - not for almost two decades. I got a Bachelor's of Arts in English from Truman State University and a Master's of Arts in English from The Ohio State University. And through it all, I knew I wanted to write novels. I just had no idea how to do it. It took a caffeine-fueled car trip with my 92-year-old grandmother and two-year-old son in July of 2007 to awaken my Muse. That story would become my first book as I figured out how, exactly, one writes a novel. Let's just say the learning curve was steep. One character led to another, and before long, I found my characters out in South Dakota, among the Lakota Sioux tribe. Modern-day cowboys, who are the Indians - without planning it this way, I find myself writing about the people and places that held my imagination throughout my childhood. In 2010, I sold my first novel, the award-winning Indian Princess, to Stacy Boyd of Harlequin Desire. The book will be released in 2012. Stay tuned for more updates! I live in Illinois with my husband, son, Jake the Three-Legged Wonder Wiener dog, and Gater the Four-Legged Mutt. I am a writer and editor at Mark Twain Media, Inc., an educational publishing company. I am a member of Romance Writers of America, the Chicago-North RWA, Women Writing the West, and the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance. When not chasing my son around or tweaking my books, I attempt to read, knit, and occasionally complete a home improvement project in my historical 1895 Queen Anne house. Sarah loves to hear from readers via her email: [e-mail]

Book preview

1

Ihate this job.

A vintage white Camaro pulls up outside an absolute shithole of a bar in St. Louis. Good God—is that what six-feet, four hundred and seventy-five pounds actually looks like? Linda, the woman who’d hired me, had said Padecki was a big guy, but damn.

As Padecki levers himself out of the driver’s seat, it’s like watching the moon emerge from behind the clouds. Really. Not only is Padecki huge, but he’s wearing all white. It takes a lot of confidence to pull off that look.

That’s my target tonight. That’s why I’m here.

Take. Him.

The voice whispers through the back of my mind, dry and raspy and old. Which it’s ridiculous to think of that voice as somehow separate. I’m basically talking to myself.

Which I do. A lot. Yeah, yeah, I’m going. It’s time to get to work. Damn it. But I don’t have a choice.

I never did.

My life would be so much easier if I could just bump into a guy and, boom, he drops dead, but that’s not how things works. I’ll touch my target and in three, maybe five, days, that person is irrevocably dead.

Which is great in giving me plenty of time to leave the scene, but not always helpful in making sure I don’t get hurt. And a guy Padecki’s size could hurt me plenty.

But this is fine. I’ve been doing this for fourteen years, give or take a few accidents from my childhood. Padecki isn’t the first big guy I’ve agreed to touch, and he won’t be the last. Just another day at the office, trying not to get assaulted while I spread a little fatality around.

Still, it’s times like this that I wish there was another way. Snipers have it easy. They get to snipe from a distance. They don’t have to look their targets in the eyes and see the soul they’re taking.

Me? I have to be close enough to count pores and gauge halitosis—and I’m going to have to get awfully close to Padecki.

A prickle races down my back. I don’t get nervous anymore. At least, not much. In fact, I’m real proud of how little I feel these days when I get a target in my sights. Sure, the nightmares can be brutal and, yeah, I’d rather be doing anything else besides killing people for a living, but it’s not like I have second thoughts. Because I don’t.

So this isn’t anxiety. It’s almost like someone dumping shards of ice down the back of my shirt. The sensation coils around the base of my spine. What the heck?

I close my eyes and focus on the feeling. Spiky, cold… dangerous. It feels like awareness. Like someone’s watching, waiting. For me.

Which isn’t possible. No one’s waiting for me. No one knows where I am. If I do my job right, they won’t even remember I was here.

But better safe than sorry. I adjust the mirrors to check my surroundings, but no one’s hanging out, pretending to look at their phones while they lie in wait. Heck, I don’t see anyone now that Padecki has made it into this crappy bar. Which is good.

I am nobody. I have no record. Except for my car insurance and driver’s license, I’m off the grid. All my bank accounts, passports, and prepaid credit cards are under false names. I have no permanent address, no next of kin. I’m an orphan, for God’s sake. I have no past and I barely exist in the present. There’s nothing to connect me to anything or anyone. Nothing but the picture and a mostly blank birth certificate, anyway. I am untraceable—one step removed from a ghost.

Still alive, though. Pretty sure about that.

Focus, Suzie. The sooner the job is done, the sooner I can get back to the safety of my trailer and a pint of ice cream. Which is selfish. I should be focused on the fact that, the sooner I touch Padecki, the sooner a girl will be safe, but ice cream is what it takes to keep me going.

That Camaro would fetch a pretty penny. Linda doesn’t have much money, but that car will settle her debt. I’d hate to sell it, because then I’ll have to talk to an actual human—which never goes well—but it can’t be helped. Can’t haul an Airstream trailer with a muscle car.

If I’m lucky, it’s worth twenty, thirty thousand. Which isn’t enough to retire on, sadly.

Ha, retirement. How could anyone retire if they’re cursed to kill every single person they touch? The best I could hope for would be having enough money in the bank that I could disappear into some forgotten back country and only risk interacting with another living being on a once-monthly grocery run.

But that’s not good enough, frankly. What I wouldn’t give to break this damned curse completely. It’s not like I signed up for this and there’s absolutely nothing to go on besides a photo with the name Angel of Vengeance and what seems a heck of a lot like a curse written on the back. No named demon that turns up in Google searches. No text that matches the photo’s inscription anywhere online.

Everything I’ve tried—voodoo curse-reversing spells, Wiccan invocations to cast out demons and even just simply trying to destroy the photograph—has been exactly as productive as thoughts and prayers after a tragedy.

Nothing changes. It just is. The sky is blue. Water is wet. I am the Angel of Vengeance.

But it’s fine. I made peace with this a long time ago. If I’m going to be lethal, I’m going to at least be lethal for a good reason.

And Padecki is an awfully good reason. Three weeks ago, Linda wrote Padecki had taken her daughter out to dinner a few months prior and, when he’d brought the girl home, she’d been screaming in agony, torn and bleeding. When Linda had tried to take the girl to the hospital, Padecki had locked her and the girl in the basement, basically holding them hostage except when he took the girl somewhere—where she was clearly being violated. Padecki’s brother was a cop so Linda couldn’t go there, either. There was no place he wouldn’t find them.

She’d included a link to a video of two men raping a child. Even with the sound off, it was horrifying. Like all the others.

She’s only nine, her mother said.

No one else will protect her like I can. I never wanted to be the Angel of Vengeance, but, by God, I can use this damned curse to save that child. To save as many of them as I can. That doesn’t make me the monster here. That makes me the hero.

All I have to do is touch her abuser. It’s not like I’ve got to pull the trigger and watch his brain matter splatter on the wall. Just a simple bit of incidental contact and one girl will be saved. She’ll get to have a normal life. Because of me.

One day, I hope I’ll be able to leave my horror-show life behind. Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could break the damn curse entirely? I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life walking the fine line between life and death. I could go to Jonathan. We could be together. I could hug the man without signing his death warrant. Kiss him? Dare I dream, make love?

I’d be so good for him, too. A devoted wife who’d help him run his ice-cream stand because ice cream makes people happy. He already has a dog—Skipper, who’s in all his Instagram posts—but we’d get another one or two or four soft, cuddly puppies that’ll love me no matter what. And maybe…

My eyes burn and I have to blink back tears. Maybe children. Not that I know anything about kids beyond, you know, being willing to kill for them, but I’ve never had a family before. If only there was a way to go from this—sitting outside a crappy bar, gearing up to kill a violent, abusive man—to a life with Jonathan. One filled with love and happiness instead of pain and suffering. Jonathan and I would grow old together and fall asleep at night holding hands.

Other people dream of winning the lottery. I dream of normalcy.

One day soon. Before I lose what’s left of my soul, I pray. There’s been so many…

What’s one more?

I glance at the time. My twenty minutes are up. The icy, prickly feeling hasn’t gone away, but I don’t see anyone lying in wait. Fine. I’ll deal with the paranoia later.

One day, my dreams will come true.

Take. Him.

Today, however, is not that day.

My stomach lurches dangerously as I push open the door to the bar. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. There’s hip-hop music blaring and two TV screens—old tube TVs, not flat screens—mounted to the wall behind the bar. It smells, too. Body odor and stale beer and weed and something else that I choose not to think too closely about. I have a weak gag reflex.

In the movies, a hush would fall over the bar as someone so wildly out of place as me walked in. But the TVs keep blaring and hip-hop keeps hopping, so there’s no discernible drop in volume. What does happen, however, is that everyone looks at me.

And I mean everyone. To a man—there aren’t any women here—they physically recoil as waves of revulsion pass over them. A few look ill. Most just look scared. I doubt any of them realize they’re reacting at all. Which is normal.

Guys like Padecki never see the danger. They come to me. They dance with my brand of death in the pale moonlight. All I have to do is give them a little… encouragement.

But when it comes to everyone else, it’s a different story. Decent folks instinctively stay away from me—which is a nice way of saying they are actively repulsed by my mere presence. Which is fine. I don’t want to mess with them any more than they want to mess with me.

After all, I’m just a five-foot-five, hundred-and-thirty-pound woman of ambiguous ethnic origins, with curly hair that defies all known laws of physics and John Frieda, wearing steel-toed boots and blue jeans because it’s hard to be the Angel of Vengeance in yoga pants. I look harmless.

I want them to believe I’m harmless.

A memory of Jonathan, sprawled on the concrete, his legs bent at wrong angles because I’m not harmless, floats in my mind, but I push it away. Now is not the time, dammit.

That feeling that something’s wrong here only gets stronger as multiple pairs of eyes follow me as I take another step inside. They outnumber me and, by any reasonable metric, I’m easy pickings. But almost to a man, they act as if the Devil himself just walked into the room to collect his due.

Maybe they’re not wrong about that.

I can feel something’s not right, like a cold fog condensing on my skin. Great. My instincts are usually right and, at this exact moment in time, they’re screaming for me to walk right back out of this bar. It’s not safe. And I’m not talking about Padecki. He’s just the regular kind of dangerous. This… this is different.

I almost gasp when it hits me. Whatever this is, it feels familiar.

Shit, shit, shit.

But it’s too late. I’m committed. There’s a kid who’s depending on me. I just need ten minutes—five, even—to do my thing. Then I can run far and fast.

Calm. I’m calm. I’m an instrument of justice and instruments of justice don’t have panic attacks on the job or blow their cover. I’m a professional, dammit, and I’m going to act like it.

I’m still just a girl. In a bar. Looking for a man to kill.

A man I don’t see.

Where is Padecki?

I know from my research that, through the doorway in the back, there’s a narrow hall that leads to a one-hole toilet and a storage room. The storage room has a door that leads out to the alley. Padecki better be in the john, by God. I’m not chasing him down.

Always know where the exits are. Just a good rule for life—airplane flights, movie theater showings, and dangerous situations you willingly put yourself in for the sake of justice. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way.

If anything, the prickly feeling gets worse, tightening around the base of my spine until my butt clenches. It’s like a dream, one you can almost remember in the morning even as it slips through your fingers.

I take another covert glance around but don’t recognize anyone. Mostly black men, mostly older, a few bikers—nothing that rings any bells. This is not a party crowd. These men are here to drink and forget. With a little luck, none of them will remember me.

But someone is watching me. I can feel it. He or they or whoever has noticed I don’t belong.

No panicking. Panic gets a girl noticed or—worse—killed. Stick to the plan, which is to get a drink.

I ignore the way men are wrinkling their brows as I head to the bar, like I’m the one who smells bad. I refuse to let the opinions of bunch of guys who’d willingly surround themselves with this odor make me feel like I’m lacking. I’m not here for them, anyway.

The bartender backs up. He’s a black guy, probably in his fifties, with a real hangdog look about him. Maybe he cheats on his wife or fudges his taxes, but the fact that he finds me unsettling is a real reliable indicator that he’s not a monster. Believe it or not, most people aren’t. They can be a little bit bad or even total assholes, but the fact is, most people aren’t intentionally evil. Thank God for that. The knowledge that most people are fundamentally decent gives me just a little bit of hope.

Help you? he finally says after a tense moment.

I’m in St. Louis so… Bud Light, I say in an intentionally small voice.

Beer is terrible. I understand its purpose as a social lubricant in society, but it tastes like dirty sweat socks to me. Fermented dirty sweat socks. Besides, no one wants me to get blitzed and accidentally cause an earthquake to rattle a major urban area or something. I have, on occasion, tolerated a hard cider because it’s just like apple juice only worse.

This is not a hard cider kind of establishment.

The bartender looks at me like I’ve lost my ever-loving mind. "You want a beer?" he says as if I’d asked for a pink elephant.

I give him a calculated weak smile. Please.

Someone shifts in my peripheral vision and the hairs on my arms stand straight up. That post-nightmare-waking foggy feeling—it’s suddenly stronger. I am not imagining this. I better not be.

I don’t look. I don’t react at all because a reaction is confirmation. I will not cower, by God. I’m one of the deadliest women in the world. I’ve killed more people than I can count. I will not be afraid of anyone living. Hell, I won’t be afraid of anyone dead, for that matter.

The bartender’s gaze cuts to my side. Your funeral, he says with a shrug, filling up a grimy-looking glass and setting it in front of me. He manages to keep a solid two feet between us at all times.

Thanks. I pull a crumpled ten out of my pocket and leave it on the bar so there’s no risk of bumping his hand. Keep the change.

He frowns and, without picking up the cash, moves away. Much farther away.

Who’s next to me? It’s not Padecki—his blinding whiteness would reflect in my peripheral vision.

Looking without looking, all I can make out is whoever it is, he’s dressed in all black.

Don’t make me kill you, I think while taking a sip of the beer. It’s awful and it takes everything I’ve got not to cough.

Jonathan has never been as far away as he is right now.

But that’s fine. I don’t want him anywhere near me when I’m working. There’s a hard line between this life and the one I’ll have with him—for both our sakes. He healed once. I can’t risk him a second time.

What I need to do now is figure out who the asshole next to me is and why I’m having this extreme reaction to him, or if there’s something else in play here, or what. I’ve seen some weird shit in my time and—hello, waiting to kill a guy with a deadly, cursed touch. I’m not ruling out something otherworldly here.

Moving carefully, I glance up at the cracked mirror behind the bar. Padecki is nowhere to be seen. Instead…

A biker is staring at me.

Oh, shit.

2

Irecognize him.

I can’t breath.

I recognize him.

From… Terra Haute, maybe? I try not to remember the details but… Yeah, hadn’t there been a bear-sized biker in a lot of black leather, hovering at the edge of yet another crappy bar?

He was watching me. Or my target. It doesn’t matter. What matters is he was there and now he’s here. Right next to me.

This is bad. This is beyond bad. This is a fucking disaster, pardon my French. If he recognizes me, he could place me in the vicinity of that target—a wife-beater? Hell if I can remember. There’ve been so many.

But if he can put me with that target, he’ll be able to place me in the orbit of Padecki and that’s not good. I’m extremely careful—to the point of paranoid—to make sure no one can ever connect me to the random accidents that happen in my wake.

I’m overreacting. It’s not like one dude in this shithole bar maybe recognizing me from a previous shithole bar proves anything other than I frequent shithole bars. But I don’t like it when people remember me. It’s little more than a loose thread on a sweater, but all it takes is one good tug on that thread and the whole thing unravels.

I have rules, dammit, and first among those is not to kill anyone without a really, really good reason. Child rape is a good reason, one that’s been backed up by proof.

Unsettling, potentially familiar biker? Not a good reason.

Crap. I don’t like loose ends, not one bit. I don’t want to have to kill this guy.

God, I hate this job.

Except... he’s not reacting. His eyes aren’t widening with recognition, he’s not jerking his head around to get a better look at me—he’s just sitting there, drinking. It’s so dim in this place that I’m not that sure he’s actually looking at me in the mirror. Maybe I’ve got this wrong.

I look away, all casual-like. I don’t know him. I’ve never seen him before. And he definitely doesn’t know me. My hair is big tonight—St. Louis is humid. I think I had it in a bun in Terra Haute. I hope so, anyway.

I study my dirty glass but that feeling of familiarity doesn’t fade. I swear to God, nothing about this night is going right. At least that damn voice in the back of my head is quiet. That’s another one in the no-touching-bikers column.

I wish I could just spin off this bar stool and walk right back out of this shitty bar and drive away from this shitty city. I don’t want to spend the next few months looking over my shoulder. I don’t want to debate if I’m losing my mind or justifiably paranoid. Hell, I don’t want any part of being the Angel of Vengeance, dammit.

Except for the girl. I can’t leave her to be pimped out by Padecki. She’s just a kid.

Fine. Fine.

I glance up again. The biker is still looking at me in the mirror. Damn.

Then the weirdest freaking thing happens. I can’t really see his lips because his beard is epic but I swear to God I feel like he’s smiling at me.

People do not smile at me. They do not flirt or tease or do anything but look vaguely ill when I’m around unless they’re going to die very soon. Jonathan was the only exception and that didn’t end well for him.

This biker…If he recognizes me, does that mean he’s like Padecki? Like all my targets who can scent fear on the wind and lives to chase it? Is this a guy who’s already damned?

It doesn’t matter. Even if he’s the worst of the worst, I’m not going to touch him unless he leaves me no choice. I’m not a monster. I have rules for good reasons. I’ve made mistakes before and I’m not about to take a life just because a guy is creeping on me.

The bartender moves closer to the dude, who blissfully stops staring at me long enough to order a whiskey.

I’m just going to ignore him. And that feeling of familiarity. And the paranoia. None of it matters. All that matters is the job. The girl. Making the world a better place. Peace, love and all that crap.

I hunch over my barstool, making myself even smaller. I am vulnerable, I think into the atmosphere. Where the hell is Padecki when I need him?

The biker moves suddenly and I can’t help it—I flinch. But he doesn’t come at me. He doesn’t do anything except walk away from the bar.

Not going to lie, I let go of a big sigh of relief. The strangeness is all in my head and if I don’t feed the paranoid delusions, they go away.

Still... I can’t help but notice the way the biker fills out his chaps. He’s big, but not Padecki big. Instead of a mountain of fat, this dude his all hard muscle and easy grace and, yeah, I’m just going to appreciate that combo for a second. I mean, if I’m going to have paranoid delusions, I should enjoy them, right?

Holy cow, look at his butt in those chaps. Not that I’m staring, but it’s hard not to as he leans over a jukebox in the far corner of the bar. Wow. Wow. Was he wearing chaps before? I’d remember that ass.

He leans an arm on the jukebox, really studying his options.

Whoa. Nice arms. No, nice is a weak word. Freaking amazing arms. That vein that runs down his forearm—and those biceps! The bottom edge of a tattoo peeks out from under the ragged edge of his sleeve, but I can’t figure out if it’s a skull or flames or...

A flutter of sensations builds low in my stomach. Bad boys don’t normally catch my eye. I don’t want a bad boy, heart of gold or not. I don’t want anyone who’s capable of violence. I want a kind, sweet, gentle, good man. I want Jonathan.

But there’s no harm in appreciating the male form. What does this biker dude look like without all that black leather? Does his chest match those biceps? Does he have chest hair or not? Does his butt look as good bare as it does cupped by those chaps?

Is he built to match?

Not that I’m picturing the proportions of his dick, because I’m not. I’m also not blushing. Really. But he did smile at me and he is gorgeous, in a rough-n-dirty kind of way. Not that I have a point of comparison but… I bet he’d be amazing.

He makes his selection and straightens, but he doesn’t turn around so I keep staring. You know, maybe I’ve got this wrong. There’ve been a lot of dark bars and biker dudes, after all, and it’s possible I’m imagining the whole familiar thing. Or maybe it’s not paranoia at all. Maybe... it takes me a moment to realize that the fluttering, the prickling… is it desire? Or maybe it’s the beer.

No, it’s attraction. Maybe it wasn’t at first. I didn’t know a hot, burly biker was in this bar when I was in the Bronco. But there was awareness then. I mean, I don’t have a lot of experience with raw attraction so I can see how I’d get the emotions mixed up.

I’m just curious, I guess. All I can do is admire a hot body from a safe distance and that’s that.

I don’t ‘do’ one-night stands. Or two-night stands. Or any stands, really. I live like a monkish hermit. I don’t lust and, if I did, I’d lust for Jonathan. Not some Hell’s Angel with all the Danger! signs in the world pointing at him.

He turns around and catches me staring in the mirror and, this time, I don’t imagine anything—he’s grinning at me like the freaking Cheshire Cat and a rush of warm air hits me from behind and it feels like a warning. I cut a glance at the front door, but no one walked in.

This just got weird. Again.

My God, I’m stupid. Really, really stupid. I’m on a job and I need to be paying attention to my instincts! What the hell am I thinking, getting distracted by a beard and a pair of chaps? Do I want to die today? Because that’s a potential outcome if I lose focus. This isn’t a game. What I’m doing is life or death.

And I almost forgot that. Because of a hard body.

I ignore the biker and his broad grin and rippling muscles. I don’t want him to look at me anymore. No more smiling. No more pondering about his chest hair. I’m here for one reason and one reason alone—Padecki. After this, though, I’m bailing. Something’s not right and that something is me. I need to hide—someplace safe, with no people and no ghosts or spirits or any of that crap. Someplace with pretty vistas and no dead bodies or condemned souls. A vacation. Someplace close to the water. There’s something peaceful about water. Something final.

Yeah, I need a break. I’ll take a little time off and put myself back together again. Maybe take another crack at not being the Angel of Vengeance. If that’s possible. Might not be. But it wouldn’t hurt to go a few months without killing anyone.

I just have to take care of Padecki first. The girl would feel scared and hurt and powerless to fight against a guy Padecki’s size. That’s what I’ve got to push out into the Universe.

By God, I’m not going to fail this kid. I may be an Angel of Vengeance but I figure that

Reviews for The Last Friend You'll Ever Have

[Elli · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Trigger warning ⚠️ detailed description of abuse and sexual assault

The book itself is okay, but really depressing throughout and the end, while happy, didn't salvage it for me

[Cindy Overton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Intriguing read. A woman who was born with a curse - everyone she physically touches dies within days - all she knows from her childhood is her birth certificate has no one listed on it and a picture with a woman who at times looks like she has a demon on her back with Angel of Vengeance written on the back.

Alice doesn't know her origins but instead of letting the curse completely ruin her life she decides to use it to punish rapists, pedophiles and murderers. But her lonely existence has taken a toll and she begins to wonder if life is worth living. Its at this time things take a drastic turn in her life with a tiny sliver of hope of learning about her origins along with possibly getting rid of the curse.